By happenstance, I know a young couple who had a child at a very young age. The father is in his early twenties and underemployed. The mother is probably 19, has a job, but isn’t exactly well paid. The baby is two. The couple isn’t really a couple, though, because they split up about a year ago. The father has primary custody despite his basic unemployment because the mother really wasn’t interested in having the responsibility. It’s not that she doesn’t love her baby, but she tends to drop him off early when she has visitation because her new boyfriend is more interesting, if you know what I mean.
The father hasn’t touched a drug in years. The mother? She might be high right now.
So, let’s think about how this law would impact these parents and their two year-old boy.
The House late Wednesday voted to give states the authority to conduct drug testing on people applying for food stamps under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
By voice vote, members approved the idea as an amendment to the farm bill that was proposed by Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.). Hudson said the proposal would help ensure SNAP benefits go to needy families and children.
“If adopted, this amendment would join a list of good-government reforms contained in the farm bill to save taxpayer money and ensure integrity and accountability within our nutrition system,” Hudson said.
They get SNAP money because they are living in poverty. Under this new law, would they both have to go piss in a cup every time they wanted to feed their kid? Because that might not work out too well. The mother might not show up. And she might fail the test if she did. Maybe the father could argue that he has primary custody so only his pee should count. But she’s the one who receives the benefit because she’s the one who applied for it. I’d hope their child wouldn’t go hungry while they sorted that out.
But let’s think about this some more. Does the mother’s disinterest and occasional pot habit make her child less needy? You might think that the drug test would dissuade her from getting high and that, thereby, she’d become a better parent. But this young woman can’t even be counted on to spend 20 hours a week with her child because she has things she’d rather be doing.
You might argue that the state should intervene and take the baby away, but he’s in the caring hands of his father, who only lacks the resources to make ends meet on his own. There is no reason to take the baby away, and it would actually be quite harmful to everyone involved.
SNAP is a supplemental nutrition program set up to assure that children don’t suffer from malnutrition or a detrimentally poor diet. The idea that you might take this nutrition away because one parent likes to smoke a joint now and then and isn’t particularly responsible, seems beyond cruel. It’s self-defeating.
It’s not just cruel, it is unconstitutional. It’s costly. It should be for away with for every aspect of life, including employment; if an interview and resume isn’t enough of a screening process, hire new management and fire the current people in charge.
But that’s the point: it’s costly, and someone is gettin paid.
Done away*
Pro-life.
Until it’s born.
No it isn’t. It just looks that way to you because you don’t understand the purpose of the law. The purpose is to punish the poor for being poor, and thereby reward the privileged for being privileged.
It’s not to punish the poor – it to stop assisting the poor. Bottom line is they don’t give a rodent’s sphincter about the poor and don’t believe that “we” should be helping “them” in the first place. This is just a step towards dismantling the “nanny state” of support for
lazy, not-good m-f’ersthe poor.They always want to talk or deal with mothers only. It’s as if they want single mother families and no male influence on the children.
It’s nothing but pure, malevolent punishment for the sin of being poor. That’s what happens when you make capitalism into a self-serving morality. The rich are “good” because they earned it purely through their own hard work; the less well-off are “bad” because they are lazy, dumb and resentful.
The upper classes have been making this argument for eons. It’s only recently that America allowed it to completely infect our body politic. It has no place in a modern, civilized society. It is absurd and hateful.
As our economic system has become more and more precarious over the last 30+ years, it is far preferable for some people to believe that if someone is poor they must have done something wrong than it is to face that they too are just as vulnerable to economic disaster. Most of us are one or two bad things away. If you have a serious medical condition and can no longer work, you could lose everything.
During the healthcare reform debates there were so many people who just didn’t want to believe that you could have insurance and lose it (rescission) just when you need it or that you could bump into lifetime caps right in the middle of your treatment. Believing this meant having to face the injustice of paying into an insurance system for years under the false impression it gave you security.
You can see this attitude at work in so many issues like food stamps, or housing assistance. I don’t know that it is hate so much as powerful denial at work. Acknowledging the truth is incredibly frightening.
Oh boy do I agree with MomSense here. Millions and millions of Americans justify poverty, unemployment, bankruptcy, foreclosure, illness, poor education and a raftload of other devastating circumstances when they are suffered by others. To admit that “there but for the grace of God go I” is terrifying to these people. My character is superior to the sufferers, these terrified Americans tell themselves.
It’s truly awful, and one of our biggest challenges as a Nation. I grew up at a time when the Golden Rule was pushed forward as an ideal morality. Much of modern media and many portions of society now mock the Golden Rule all day, every day as an enabling of immorality and sloth.
Denial is an incredibly powerful phenomenon, especially when combined with personalities that lean toward the sociopathic. Its probably the only thing that keeps their gut-churning fear at bay. They’re “doomed as doomed can be, you know”.
A better happenstance, rural Kentucky, 67 yr old grandma taking care of her 3 grandchildren who are under the age of 8. She has the kids because her meth head daughter and son in law are too busy getting high. Will she submit to a drug test or will she drop the kids off at child services?
I volunteer at a free clinic so all this is second hand but in Virginia, anyone can apply for food stamps. Unlike other forms of help, you don’t need to have a child to apply. The limits are abysmal; one person with $0.00 in income receives $200.00 per month. The maximum income(for one person) is just over $1300.00 per month and someone with that income is only going to get, maybe, $20.00 per month. So the young man, if he’s below whatever income level is set in your state, might well be eligible for SNAP by himself. If the child is living with him, the mother should not be claiming him on her food stamps; the father should. But it may well be that both adults are eligible in their own rights and the whoever claims the baby, would get extra.
You might want to mention this to them because in my experience, there is no effort to inform people about SNAP benefits unless they specifically ask.
WIC might also be available and children are eligible until they are 6 (I believe).
Someone came into the clinic today with an income of $650.00 per month. The food stamp benefit he receives is $105.00 per month. This is what they are talking about cutting in the Farm Bill.
Also, I’m fairly sure that in the worst case scenario, the baby would be eligible by him/herself. It is possible to receive benefits and have those benefits assigned to someone who acts on your behalf; say someone is handicapped and a family member does his shopping. The EBT card would be in the family member’s name even though the benefits would be for the other person.
They have reached some kind of tipping point. What comes after greedy? Sociopath? Sadist? Google probably makes more tax cheating in one day then the whole SNAP program costs for a year. Unfortunately poor hungry children do not contribute to PACs so they get the shaft. Its class warfare and it isn’t pretty.
Cruel? Check.
Self-defeating? Check.
Underlying racist assumptions? Check.
Underlying class warfare? Check.
This is the perfect GOP policy proposal!
How many times does this have to be said..
THEY DO NOT CARE
THEY ARE FUCKING SOCIPATHS
the entire lot of them.
and fuck every person that voted for these muthafuckas and put them in the position where they could hurt people like this.
Indeed, they do appear as the Honey Badger on these sorts of subjects.
It is not self-defeating if the purpose is to make sure that no motivated poor kid competes with your rich kid in college. The 1% solution these days seems to be “destroy the brain cells early and often.”
This is a great post, Boo, and exactly what we need to do more often: draw a line between dangerous policies and real-world damage.
Thanks.